


Aluminium

by foolishnotions



Series: Tokens from the Roadside [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Sparrow Hill Road - Seanan McGuire
Genre: Car Accidents, Crossover, Driving, Gen, Ghost Stories, Grief, Hitchhiking, Storytelling, autobiographical fictionalisations, lying to people, maybe dead girls do make friends, roadside diners, superheroes and dead girls, therapeutic storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-08 23:16:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6878815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolishnotions/pseuds/foolishnotions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose lied about her past, but maybe Bucky is ready to tell someone the truth about his.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aluminium

**Author's Note:**

> I have been vague about the timing of this piece on purpose. You can place it any time when you would like Bucky to be in a position to pick up hitchhikers.  
> Contains no spoilers for Civil War. Probably contains no significant spoilers for Sparrow Hill Road.

It doesn’t feel right to tell this story for myself. So many drivers, so many legends, and it doesn’t feel right to hear it in my voice, telling this legend at the counter. None of the events belong, of course. I took them all, stolen facts, pilfered details. I’ve had a hundred legends, a hundred stories to choose from and I use them all. Better that no one hears my version if they don’t really need to. Anyway, it’s better, when they think they made the ghost girl, that her story is unique to themselves.

If there’s one thing I didn’t want to do tonight, it’s tell the story of the woman at the diner.

It doesn’t help to that there’s something wrong about hearing this guy say he doesn’t know the story. It’s part of the script though, so I tell him a version. He’s not really listening, just stirring his coffee and with a motion that doesn’t look quite right. I sip my own. Gulp is probably the better word because before I know it, the cup is empty. The coffee had tasted mostly like sugar and a little like aluminium. 

Aluminium, ashes and aluminium is what I smell around this guy. I’ve never smelled aluminium before, but he keeps giving me coffee and pie, which is nice of him but I have to keep talking to fill the silence, which isn’t quite as wonderful. He never reacts to any of what I say either, and I’m not entirely certain he’d notice it if I stopped altogether. 

Is it breaking the rules if the driver doesn’t stick to the script? Because damn, I could get in a lot of trouble if he doesn’t start to play his role soon.

“Just trying to get home,” I say when he finally gives in asks me what I’m doing here. “You think you can give a girl a ride?”

No answer. He stares straight ahead and for a moment I smell lilies, then rosemary, then lilies again. Then aluminium. I wonder if a giant waste of my time smells like aluminium. That would make sense at his point.

I tug at the cuffs of my jacket, a tacky blue-tinted fake leather thing with rivets in odd places that pushes the limits of my truck stop girl appeal. This guy doesn’t care. He doesn’t say anything, just pays the bill and nods toward the door. I get up from the counter and follow him. Lilies again. 

It’s lilies as I slide into the passenger seat of his car. It’s a car and not a truck, which surprises me as I settle into my place for the drive. He keeps his eyes on the road, staring straight ahead in silence. It isn’t the silence of the road, or one of love for the car, or the journey. Just silence. I want to ask him what took his conversation away, not that I think he might tell me, but I’m curious nonetheless. There’s something to the way he sits in the seat that tells me he’d rather not be driving, that he didn’t choose this journey and maybe bringing a hitch-hiker with him is a way to make the road less hateful.

So why is he so determined to avoid telling me anything about himself or where he’s going?

It’s rosemary as I notice his grip on the steering wheel. He’s holding it too tight and his hand sits awkwardly in the wrong place on the wheel. Course corrections jerk just a little too much, and he didn’t take his gloves off in the diner or in the car. It occurs to me that if I wasn’t dead, this might be the kind if ride I could take to get that way. I wonder, briefly, if trying to save this one is even a good idea. Probably not. It’s still Rosemary, though and I’m in now. 

He hasn’t told me his name yet, which could be a problem as we get closer to what’s coming, as the car rattles down the road trying to compensate for a driver who doesn’t understand her, maybe he can’t understand her and he’s got no feel for the road. 

A mismatched car and driver are among the greatest dangers of the highway. 

Then it’s lilies again as I try my hand at conversation. I’m Rose. I told you that, I’m sorry. I’m trying to get home but if you take me to the next town, I’d be grateful. What is the next town, anyway? 

Shit. He’s really not going for this. Him and his goddamn crappy driving and his silence and…

It’s aluminium when I finally see it, when I put it all together despite my ride’s reluctance to talk to me. I see the glint of metal and the awkwardness in his driver’s posture and I understand. The metal isn’t the problem, though it probably messes with his dexterity and explains some of the lurching around the car is doing. No, this man was never meant for the road. He belongs to the daylight well enough, and I can accept his gifts, but he sits all wrong on the road and I’m sure he belongs to some other America, with other priorities and other dangers and other rules. Rules I’m not sure I understand.

If it goes wrong tonight, I can’t be sure the ghost roads will accept him at all. 

The aluminium doesn’t fade as the lilies return and along with the ashes and it’s almost overwhelming by the time he finally tells me that his name is James in his weird uncertain way that suggests he had to think about it. I hate that tone and I wonder what kind of trouble he’s in. Now he tells me, now that I’m out of time to stop what’s coming. The accident is ahead, a blind curve and a jackknifed truck and a little car whose driver can’t feel the road or listen to his car. I tell him to slow down. I tell him to veer off. I tell him to listen to his car but it’s all no use. 

James doesn’t scream when he crashes. The car collides with the back of the truck and there’s crushed metal and broken glass everywhere. I check on him in the driver’s seat but he isn’t there. The driver’s door has been torn apart, window shattered and there’s no sign of James.

Oh god, and Persephone and anyone else who might be listening, please don’t let there be another Bobby Cross on the roads.

I shrug out of my coat and leave the life I borrowed behind, trading it for a better chance at locating James in the aftermath of the crash. Once I’m insubstantial again, it doesn’t take long to find him. He’s ahead of the car, in the wreckage of the truck that wrecked before he did. He’s unconscious and his head is bleeding but he’s breathing, barely. I wish I hadn’t removed my jacket. I can’t help him like this, just be here till the end, and help if he rises. Oh please don’t let him rise. If he has to go, then let it be quietly, he was never meant to die on the road, not like this.

He doesn’t rise.

I’m about to sink down into the Twilight, now that there’s nothing more for me to do when I see him twitch. It’s been too long to be a last spasm, some quirk of living bodies that keeps them active a little while after there’s nothing left inside. No, this is the twitch of the living, and it’s followed by another, and another. In a moment there’s movement, real movement, and here I am, with no coat and my prom dress trying to assert itself over my jeans and white tank top. 

Fuck. Shit. Crap. They’re not supposed to get up like this. You’re not supposed to get up like this once I’m sure that you’re gone. What is going on here?

James moves again and there’s the sound of something other than flesh against the metal from the wreckage as he tries to force himself out from under it. The remains of the accident give way at his hands and I take a step back. I don’t know what he is anymore. I may have just rescued a monster, something to stalk the roads. 

Suddenly, I don’t smell ashes or lilies or rosemary anymore. But damn, the aluminium is overpowering.

I don’t get time to process it, because James stands up and I don’t know what to do, or say when he looks at me. He’s not the man from the diner anymore, his expression has lost the sad, maybe hurt, touch that made me not want to press him too hard for information, even if it was for his own good. Something’s broken there, maybe by the push to survive, I don’t know. This guy’s not even dead and he doesn’t belong to the road and he’s breaking every rule I know just by existing. 

It takes a minute to realise that he hasn’t stopped looking at me. And shit, I’m in my prom dress again. 

“You’re still here,” he says. When he speaks, there’s no confusion or fear, or any of the things I’d expect to hear from someone who’s hitch-hiker walked away from an accident in a perfect green prom dress. His jaw is set and it’s a statement, not a question. 

“I am. You’re going to have a hard time getting where you’re going now,” God, that has got to be the dumbest thing I ever said. “I mean you could, but you’ll need another ride,” I give him a sheepish smile. I don’t know why. I tried to help him and he screwed it up anyway. This isn’t my fault. But here I am and I’m not going to let this get any more screwed up than it already is. He’s still staring at me and honestly it’s starting to creep me out. 

“The story you told me, back at the diner. You’re her,” James still doesn’t sound like the living usually sound when confronted with the afterlife. I don’t like it and I wonder if he isn’t somehow stuck to the Twilight himself. “You caused this.” 

You know at this point, I wish he’d stop saying these things like he already knew they were right. 

“It’s more complicated than that,” I say, taking a chance that I can be open with him. “I’m her, yeah but this isn’t on me. Not this time. You were always headed for this crash. It didn’t help that you were driving stupid. What the hell were you thinking, and how he hell are you standing here to walk away?” 

James’ jaw sets again and he watches me a little longer before finally answering me. “It’s more complicated than that,” he says. I don’t find it funny and I only barely resist the urge to disappear into the ghost roads and leave this mess behind. He doesn’t offer any more explanation than a sad, vaguely confused expression. The kind that suggests that maybe that story should stay dead. 

I still smell aluminium. I smell and taste and almost feel it even in my insubstantial state. Come on, what gives? 

James’ face sinks again, and so does his whole posture. His left hand clenches and for a moment there’s something about him, a blur, a shimmer, something not right for the living. Something trying to escape into the twilight. It’s gone before I get a good look, and he’s standing there, upright with a face I can’t read. He takes a step toward me.

“I don’t know where I’m going anymore.” It sounds like the hardest thing he’s ever had to say.

“If you want to walk with me for a while, the Last Dance Diner is nice,” I offer, before sense has a chance to assert itself. “It might be a long walk though.” 

“I have time,” he gives me something like a smile, the kind you make when you’re trying hard to convince yourself that you can do the thing you’re about to. “Have you ever heard the legend of the Winter Soldier?”


End file.
